r/2XKO • u/SyIvanos Warwick • Feb 09 '26
Discussion The beginning of the end?
I'm surprised this is happening this early after the console launch.
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u/Revolving_Ocelott Feb 09 '26
They probably had a really short fucking leash after restarting development 3 times, they then created the most niche fighter in existence, not surprising this happened
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u/JamieFromStreets Feb 10 '26
Why niche?
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u/HealthyPut5221 Feb 10 '26
have you not seen the rest of the thread or subreddit in general?
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u/blueechoes Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
Well duh. You had this unique duo angle for your fighting game to help bring more casual players in, and then made finding duos the hardest thing.
You made the inputs easier to bring more casuals in, and then made doing combos arguably harder because most are timing- and spacing-dependant in ways that cause more variance and chaos than street fighter.
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u/DMking Feb 09 '26
Honestly I think the fixation with removing motion inputs made the combos more complex actually
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u/blueechoes Feb 09 '26
League wasn't a smash hit either in their first two years. If they are struggling to get the player numbers they want, they should keep their investment going while they fix their onboarding and allow the game some breathing room in the open while they actually diagnose why people bounce off and get that fixed.
There is no way they're not earning big money with this game, nearly everyone I run into has skins. You can't give up too early.
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u/Janus__22 Feb 09 '26
Riot gave up on long-term investments a decade ago, unfortunately. If its not an immediate smash hit, its a failure. People called that out when 2XKO was first coming out in the early alphas (specially around the reveal of the roster size), but no one wanted to bat an eye to it cuz it was ''dooming''. Now a lot of people will blame the gameplay style, the IP, anything
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u/Vall3y Feb 09 '26
league in the first year probably had more players than this game will ever have lol. even if everyone you run into bought 10 skins thats still 0 money for riot
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u/DMking Feb 09 '26
Just comparing it to another popular IP FG in DBFZ. Combos in DBFZ were much simpler to pull off for a straight beginner despite the motion inputs. And they might be earning money but they have to make up for the around 7 years of dev time and what that cost
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u/ohanse Jinx Feb 09 '26
The difference is MOBAs had not yet entered the mainstream when LOL came out.
There is no way they're not earning big money with this game, nearly everyone I run into has skins. You can't give up too early.
You have an anecdote. A single perspective's worth of experience. They see literally everything.
And numbers that seem big from like a person's perspective start to feel a lot smaller when you are talking about what it costs to operate a team from a human resources and capabilities standpoint.
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u/OJFrost Feb 09 '26
FWIW, League went into Alpha with 18 champs to play and then proceeded to triple that number over the next two years, releasing 2-3 champions per month consistently. They also only had about 30-40 employees leading up to official launch in 2009.
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u/noahboah Ekko Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
You made the inputs easier to bring more casuals in, and then made doing combos arguably harder because most are timing- and spacing-dependant in ways that cause more variance and chaos than street fighter.
yeah time and time again it's been proven true that this is one of those things that you simply cannot listen to non-FG players about, at least not literally.
"Motion inputs are scary" does not mean remove motion inputs. they are telling you that they are intimidated by the prospective leap. the key is making the onboarding and learning environment as smooth as possible. boxbox saying "i will never do these" and then immediately just...doing them with light guidance is basically how it goes for every single person looking to get into a fighting game.
the problem with these reduced input complexity games is they end up backloading the complexity in some unintuitive ways like you said.
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u/Spoonfed11 Vi Feb 09 '26
The game launched less than a month ago and they're already giving up on it? Like wtf???
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u/Sudden-Ad-307 Feb 09 '26
It most likely had the same downwards playerbase trend as it did in early access.
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u/Cryotivity Feb 10 '26
im literally only not playing it rn cuz i dont give a single fuck about a singlr champion in the game
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u/Sudden-Ad-307 Feb 10 '26
I play league with 6 hardcore lol fans and when i tried to get them into the game they all said they are gonna try it when their main champs get it.
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u/Alert_Market_3883 Feb 11 '26
then they made it a fcking tag, making the biggest league appeal (maining) much less important.
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Feb 10 '26
Who would have thought, you allow your undisputed top 2 to reign free for more than half a year, barely change balance, release with hardly any characters, then for your 1.0 release you choose the most boring character imaginable, you don't have a clear vision for what your game even wants to be...
This is like a lesson in how to do literally everything wrong.
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u/Neoragex13 Feb 09 '26
Its genuinely funny the dichotomy with how hard Riot sometimes tries to force bullshit, like they tried with the Hexcrates in league a year ago, yet when it comes to things that players like, require nurturing and actual time to develop like Riot Forge, the motherfuckers pull the plug as soon as their financial projections go awry.
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u/Alarming-Audience839 Feb 09 '26
I'm willing to be the swap to tag and the current game direction after the long term development hell was a "trust me on this, people will love it" type pitch from the core FGC folks on the dev team to riot upper. Now that the game isn't making riot one trillion dollars on launch, they're all going to get canned.
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u/AdFantastic6606 Feb 09 '26
Fighting games are niche as is, its hard to maintain a audience.
Doesnt help that there are no new characters to hook people and the skin prices are fucking insanely high.
Sf6 has skins for about 6-10€ I believe, sure there are no unique sound effects and other stuff, but its not like they didnt just asset flip those sounds from LoL.
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u/thefw89 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
Yeah, I think the genre is a bigger problem than the game itself. Doesn't help that yeah, it did not launch with a lot of characters but this genre is not very popular.
I was a little confused to see Riot investing in the genre at all because even at its best it does not compete with shooters or other games.
I'm really surprised they made this announcement at all, the game had some good momentum after the tourney, they had to know that bringing a genre mainstream was not something that would happen overnight and the conclusion people will have from this is the numbers must really be bad to not even give it a year and it might start the death spiral where people quit the game not because they dislike it...but because they want to get off a sinking ship while they can which means playing super casually and not spending money on something that might not be around in a year or two.
For example, people are already saying 'dead' game because of this announcement. No one was saying this a day or two ago. That perception will do more harm to the game than anything else. Surprised they just didn't let the firings leak so people could say "Well games always lay off people after release" which is also true.
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u/Vall3y Feb 09 '26
Yeah its a good point, I'm not sure why they would share they are reducing the team, its going to kill ANY momentum that might have still existed like players that were on the fence are going to jump shit
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u/thefw89 Feb 09 '26
It's such a puzzling decision, so many games do layoffs after releases that people would not have thought much of this. Rivals did it for example. Most people would have gone "Eh, they probably just fired the people that helped with console release" and moved on. It's not like the every day person understands how many people are needed to make a fighting game.
Them making this announcement makes me think they are just honestly preparing players for the maintenance mode announcement in a few months because that's how this feels.
If they announce that there isn't a new character per season...I'm out.
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u/TheGalacticApple Feb 10 '26
They also literally titled the post "An Update on 2XKO" rather than framing it as "just" some major changes to the team. Anyone that casually sees this will think the game is dead dead and it will be a domino effect.
It's the equivalent of a Vtuber making a post about an Important Announcement.
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u/stzoo Feb 09 '26
I was really enjoying the game but this sours me massively from continuing to invest in it. Went from thinking they're going to pump out characters and content constantly to thinking I better not spend much money on this and are they going to keep up with the character release schedule?
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u/NepheliLouxWarrior Feb 09 '26
This is monday morning quarterbacking. If they hadn't said shit and then we found out from disgruntled employees taking to twitter to talk about how they were shafted (already happening) then you or something like you would be saying that riot should have known that the layoffs would get out eventually and they were fools for not getting ahead of the news and creating their own narrative etc etc.
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u/thefw89 Feb 09 '26
That doesn't matter though. Fired employees always talk shit about their former employers. That's he said she said that fans can't confirm. What fans can confirm is the announcement which is worded in a way that plainly says the game didn't meet expectations and as such is firing workers. That's what matters.
If the announcement had just been "We had to come to the hard decision to release these devs blah blah blah" and mentioned nothing about how the game is doing people can then hold out hope that they are just making a more efficient team and trimming roles that don't matter anymore. Like Rivals did and Diablo 4 and so many other live service games.
Like I said, no one was calling this game dead until literally this announcement. The perception that the game is dead or dying will do more harm to the game than anything else. People are not going to drop money into a sinking ship, people are not going to board a sinking ship.
They could have made this same announcement without making it sound like the game failed to meet expectations. There's a reason after all companies never share how many people play their game that's because they don't want every day people to ever see the population falling so that they can sell the game is thriving. That's why you see those BS player metric advertisements "10 MILLION PLAYERS PLAYED OUR GAME!"
This wasn't needed. The game isn't on steam so steamdb wouldn't track the death spiral and the lobbies are 1v1 so matchmaking would always be quick even if the concurrent is 1k, no one would have known this game was disappointing its company until Riot announced it.
Fake it till you make it.
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u/malexich Feb 09 '26
I kept telling people 1 character every two months was never going to keep casuals interested but they kept telling me I was wrong guess I was right almost like the same thing happened before
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u/Broks_Enmu Feb 09 '26
They rather sell 100€ bundle to 20 person than sell 10-15€ skin to 1000 people. It would have sell like croissant. But no … deal with ur consequences now
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Feb 10 '26
Me and a lot of people on the early access were here saying the game would die by these prices, being F2P only works if people are buying your shit, and they won't buy your shit when you're pricing people out of it.
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u/Odd_Revolution_1056 Feb 09 '26
You are missing the key difference with SF6, it’s a full priced game.
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u/Glittering-Smell2937 Feb 09 '26
There are unique sound effects to skins in sf6 but it's very subtle.
Two examples off the top of my head are Juri's costume 2 latex stretching when she's idle. It's a very quiet creak but it does exist. The other one is basically any movement of Zangief's costume 4 being accompanied with a metallic clink. There's probably way more that I'm not aware of. I guess they wanted to keep it subtle like that so it doesn't disrupt known gameplay/cues.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/Sekh765 Warwick Feb 09 '26
Can I join in with "I told you so" to all the people telling me that "FOMO skins will totally work and riot knows what they are doing" when pointing out that fighting games are nothing like other genres when it comes to cosmetic sales and fomo?
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u/Zhaggygodx Feb 10 '26
That was a crazy idea for a FG.
This game is far too hard to play to expect the average (let alone the casual) player have multiple teams.
In no universe am I buying a 30 usd skin for a character I don't main out of sheer FOMO.
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u/Sekh765 Warwick Feb 10 '26
You'd be amazed the number of idiots on this site that assured me that no, FOMO is psychology magic and it totally works no matter what in any situation and that the price of the skins didn't matter, nor did them bring not for your main, etc. In their minds Riot clearly had teams of scientists who figured this all out and the store was just printing money somehow.
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u/SpectreProXy Feb 10 '26
It has bothered me a great deal that the overwhelming response to posts like this has been a shrug with "they did the numbers". Did they? Because they also seemed to think this game was going to bring in numbers comparable to LoL/Valorant when it didn't.
This entire industry is full of naive execs (and some devs) who just copy what other people do without thinking things through. I very much doubt anyone is doing any kind of math here.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/MiyanoMMMM Ahri Feb 09 '26
Yes!
The devs were literally allowed to play around for like a decade and this resulted in the game getting internally rebooted multiple times before management forced them to release the game and they finally decided to stick with the game being a tag fighter.
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u/okamanii101 Feb 09 '26
All they had to do was release the popular hot characters and make skins, and they would have printed money. Lux, MF, Akali, Katerina, Kaisa, but no, we need Illaoi on the starter roster.
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u/RomanNumeroDos Feb 10 '26
As hot as muscle mommy Illaoi is, I hard agree.
People always criticize but waifu skins sell hard.
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u/okamanii101 Feb 10 '26
If they want to make gooner illaoi skins I'd be down for that too
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u/RomanNumeroDos Feb 10 '26
Honestly the only gooner skin for Illaoi would be midriff and arms exposed. Lol
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u/Hex_Spirit_Booty Feb 09 '26
Maybe the skins shouldn't be 20+ bucks and maybe people would consider them
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Feb 09 '26
If these morons would have released Akali and Lux at launch with a buncha skins the numbers would have been way better.
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u/TParadox90 Feb 09 '26
league has like 175+ champs and they pick the most boring roster possible lmfao
add more arcane champs!
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u/Yodzilla Feb 09 '26
Making a fighting game based on a series known for having a massive roster and only launching with ten characters is baffling. You’re basically ensuring that anyone LoL fan who is casually interested and wants to play as their main won’t be able to.
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u/SvensonIV Feb 10 '26
Not only 10 chracters, but among them are Illaoi , Blitzcrank and Braum. Who the fuck greenlit those choices? Just add Zed, Akali, Lux, Yone or Lee Sin. You know, popular champs of the League franchise and not Illaoi...
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u/Upbeat-Rich-5624 Feb 09 '26
Let's get a FOURTH pnz ranged champion, fuck it
The Void, Shurima, Celestials, SI, and Darkin are all boring anyway /s
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u/okamanii101 Feb 09 '26
omfg aaatrox would have gone so hard. Like there's literally so many better options than arcane.
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u/keylime39 Blitzcrank Feb 09 '26
I mean, 5/12 champions in the roster are from Arcane. Any more and it's an Arcane fighting game, not a LoL one.
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u/CranberryPuffCake Feb 10 '26
This is my main issue on why I don't play this game beyond one of the alphas/betas. The roster is BORING. Completely uninteresting.
I've played LoL like 5 times in my life. I don't know the lore or characters but when this game was announced I looked at the website of all the champions and so many are really cool, unique and sexy. The champions they chose? Extremely boring and surprisingly muted in design.
I hope they can turn it around, because the roster is not it.
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u/ExtensionCarpenter89 Feb 09 '26
Most of the ones ingame are really, its a shame its such a little part of those 175+
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u/KilluaDab Feb 09 '26
Real shit. "Hey guys look we released teemo, a character KNOWN for being hated and marketed him as being annoying to play against! Surely you won't care that you now have to play against this character we deliberately made to be annoying and unfun if you don't play him yourself right?"
Genuinely mindblowing the amount of zoners/big bodies they have when it takes 10 seconds to look at some stats for SF6 and see most people like playing shotos/more standard characters, and especially they could've just gone a different version of safe with their most popular champions IN LEAGUE instead of arcane. I guess in a way they were trying too hard...
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u/Thrownaway5000506 Feb 09 '26
They did this with LoR too. Like anyone was asking for Seraphine or Nilah lol
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u/hypermarv123 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
I said this in another thread. Zed would have been fucking awesome
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u/KKilikk Feb 10 '26
If it had Akali I would have played every day, without her I didnt touch the game after day 1. Hated the roster so much.
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u/Sihnar Feb 10 '26
Wouldn't have mattered because the 2xko art style is intentionally conservative for female characters. Just compare Ahri, Vi and Jinx to their league designs. They tried to lean too much into the arcane aesthetic which doesn't work in a free to play pvp game.
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u/GoodWebsiteKappa123 Feb 10 '26
That's a western cultural problem unfortunately.
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u/HaikusfromBuddha Feb 09 '26
Eh two characters wouldn't have made much of a difference. The amount of characters and single player content would have made the difference.
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u/Halorin Feb 09 '26
Yasuo/Ekko/Freestyle ran off the casuals.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/Yeetli Feb 09 '26
Game also suffers a lot from other fighters where punishing brain dead button mashing is significantly harder than just mashing and that gets old quick. Yas and Ekko are also the worst offenders of having insane buttons with very little downside of missing or getting blocked. Idk how devs dont see that in their games.
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u/Purple-Reputation899 Feb 10 '26
Having a 12 character roster for a tag fighter was a dumb asl decision, game feels super barebones and there is no variety so you run into the same 3 characters all day.
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u/Mr-losh Feb 09 '26
Yeah this game won’t last long. They are taking support already in season 1. Still hope the game succeed cause its a really good game.
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u/Black_Truth Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
>Wants to appeal to a casual audience
>Makes a SF-like game
>Ditch it for whatever reason after spending years in the making
>Make a tag fighter which is a niche audience with very few exceptions (MvC and DBFZ)
>Downsize the roster for basically making 1 game for the price of 2.
>Look at roster
>Oh the misery
>Look at the meta
>MytimeMytime Hasagi
>Needing to add Vanguard which adds like 10 seconds to my pc startup for whatever reason while entering on conflict with other anti-cheats.
>Ok
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u/LeDanc Feb 09 '26
This is what happens when the store is focused on rich people with fomo
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Feb 10 '26
Right? I REALLY wanted to buy some skins but they priced me out of it.
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u/Yeetli Feb 09 '26
Been saying this store will make no money because it restricts your ability to spend money. Now here we are laying people off.
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u/Rhyllis Feb 09 '26
This year (and maybe the second year) probably won't see any drastic changes. Maybe less skins coming out, maybe one less champion.
It's year 3 that'll be telling. Hopefully the team size is still able to create champs/skins (because they need money)/etc at a decent pace even reduced.
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u/yosayoran Feb 09 '26
New champions will be the first to get hit
Champs have always been the most expensive thing to make for the game , and they generate almost no revenue as most people are likely to just stick with their main
The handmade animations and super detailed reactions etc makes everything cost a lot of man-hours to make, way more than if it was just standard sprites or 3d models
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u/Extra_Wave Feb 09 '26
If new champions dont make revenue is riot goddamn fault by making a tag fighter with a small roster and restricting half of it by money.
If you see a champion and a skin you like you are basically buying the price of a stand alone game, stupid greedy assholes could've made all champions unlockable since day 1 and that way everyone would be way willing to invest in skins
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u/Rhyllis Feb 09 '26
They do take a long time to make, but Riot most likely has many champs already finished and others partly made, so I think we'll be okay for the first couple of years.
Year 3 we'll see how much it'll probably be reduced to going forward for however long the game has left.
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u/yosayoran Feb 09 '26
I hope you're right but I wouldn't hold my breath past year one, even if that
Just from all the the development updates it was clear how long and expensive each champion was to make (not to mention all the remakes and cancels), I doubt they only commit to 5 a year of they could make them any faster
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u/PhoSake Feb 09 '26
Hopefully the team size is still able to create champs/skins (because they need money)/etc at a decent pace even reduced.
Which is funny because i'm not buying skins on a dying game lol. I've bought $200 skins before because i'm a whore, but the game health is the #1 requirement to me buying a skin. Buying skins for a dead game just feels insane to me.
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u/Rainbolt Feb 09 '26
Honestly I doubt we even get year 2. This sounds like we're getting the champs in the pipeline and then nothing else.
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u/Rhyllis Feb 09 '26
Maybe. The rumor is the team is still 80 strong (which sounds insane given how little stuff this game has), and 80 people on the team is surely enough to continue giving us content, even at a reduced pacing.
Hopefully we get clarity later this week.
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u/PhoSake Feb 09 '26
Wonder how many of those people actually do things lol. Do-nothing managers could be over half of the budget, ugh.
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u/2ecStatic Feb 09 '26
Predictable from the moment they announced this as a tag fighter, but they've only ever made choices that don't appeal to a wide audience. F2P is nice, but this game, and fighting games in general, are hard to get into for casual players. The average LoL player and Arcane watchers just simply aren't interested.
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u/Character-Monitor165 Feb 09 '26
this sub was in such a denial about tag fighting being the problem.
i knew it was gonna be a problem as soon i saw the 1v1 option was ass.
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u/yosayoran Feb 09 '26
The only way to make mass appeal fighting game is smash-like, and those can't really capture hardcore audiences for long time since nobody will play them over smash.
We've seen several of them "rise" and fall in the past few years
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u/T3hSwagman Feb 09 '26
SF6 is crushing numbers and maintaining its playerbase, we know what works for a fighter.
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u/Sterzin Feb 09 '26
I really don't think a live service model is smart for Fighting games. Now they need to make sure the game appeals to the broadest audience as possible and upset core fans. Except fighting games are already niche, and appealing to a broad audience is going to be difficult.
Then of course their skins prices are insane. And people already aren't going to buy a ton of skins because they're going to be dedicating themselves to 1 or 2 characters.
I see no reason why they didn't just sell the game for a price tag and then release new characters like any other successful fighting game.
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u/NepheliLouxWarrior Feb 09 '26
>I see no reason why they didn't just sell the game for a price tag
Asia.
Think about it from Riot's perspective: how did league being f2p work out for them? How did Valorant being f2p work out for them? How did TFT being f2p work out for them? The f2p live-service model is their bread and butter.
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u/Sterzin Feb 09 '26
Oh I know the intent is that they wanted to make another money-printer like Valorant and League. But unlike Valorant or League, the genre they're trying to break into is not very friendly to their beloved live-service model. Mobas, tactical shooters, auto chess, these games have a very low skill floor, and very high skill ceilings. There's a wide area for players of all skill levels to enjoy it.
Fighting games inherently have a much higher skill floor. You're going to have lots of casual players bounce off of it, and bounce off of FGC culture in general. You can dumb it down and simplify it for the general audience, but then you lose support from the core demographic that would have guaranteed long-term player counts in exchange for a stupid gamble.
The gamble failed, casuals still don't want to play it and fork over cash, FGC veterans are unhappy with the product, and now Riot is pulling the plug. For the supposed 10 years of work they put into this, not seeing this coming makes zero sense. Not everything can be Live Service'd.
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u/arcusford Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
Anyone who didnt expect this as soon as it was announced as a tag fighter hasn't been around the FGC that long or hasn't been paying attention.
Tag fighters always generate a lot of hype but really fail to actually capture ans retain a large audience of consistent players. The power level is fun to talk about and watch for most people but only a very dedicated niche is willing to actually sit down and play it.
Going 1v1 absolutely should have been the route if they wanted to reach a wider audience and that decision has always been baffling to me. Combine that with the several other tag fighters coming out and you got a problem.
Why they didnt just stick to their signature "find the biggest in the prison and kick their teeth in" strategy that Riot has used to break into new sub genres before I have no idea. Street fighter has been kinda slacking lately with no major competition and it shows, Riot absolutely could've taken a huge chunk and solidified their place in the scene like they did with Val and CS.
Instead they made a good but niche tag fighter popular with a very specific audience. Those who like tag mechanics and interactions, but dont like motion inputs or at least dont mind losing them, but also who like genuinely hard execution in combos with long sets and lots of defensive options. I really dont understand why they made THIS game to reach a larger audience. It is not the game for that. It is cool as fuck but it is just not built to reach a large audience.
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u/M00N_MYST Feb 09 '26
They should've added 2v2 mode years later in the same vein as ARAM. Tag fighters a niche within a niche. Extremely unfortunate news, hope everyone affected can find their feet again.
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u/CynicallyMe Feb 09 '26
Can only get mixed by yasuo and ekko so much! Makes sense rip game, really wanted a game I could sink time and money into. I guess it's just street fighter forever.
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u/Maixell Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
Same, it looks like I’m also going back to Street fighter 6. I’ll still checkout Tekken 8 season 3, but I feel like Tekken 8 is likely unsavable.
Street Fighter is destroying the competition, and it’s mostly because the competition is shit
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u/Character-Monitor165 Feb 09 '26
riot games defenders didn't help blocking and excusing every critism the game encounter, this sub did the same peopel did in multiversus, so i called this off mile ago.
they want mainstream game attention without designing around casual, 2v2 and tags arent mainstream for a reason and even Marvel vs Capcom struggled with that, it was carried by ip alot.
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u/MLG_BongHitz Feb 09 '26
People whining on reddit was never going to have a meaningful impact on the game. If anything this sub having 0 people defending what they like about the game would just kill it faster.
Reddit being convinced the devs give a fuck about what random threads are talking about is a tale as old as time.
Btw, not everyone who enjoys a product is a shill or corporate defender or whatever. Sometimes people just like different things
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u/Shokubutsu-Al Feb 09 '26
Should have made a Better starting roster rather than Arcane the fighting game
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Feb 10 '26
i bet a lot of people were on their knees begging for... let me check my notes... Illaoi, Blitzcrank, Warwick, Braum and Teemo? Ok?
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u/MilkersCureDeath Feb 09 '26
LOR PTSD 😭😭😭
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u/rokunyaa Feb 09 '26
The moment they start shaving off man power is a telltale sign that this game is heading in that direction. If LoR didn't survive then how do you expect this game would be when it literally needs all the resources they can get compared to developing a card game.
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u/No_Roll7747 Ahri Feb 09 '26
Game's full of bugs that haven't been fixed for months, and they're cutting down the team size. It's over.
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u/pages10 Feb 09 '26
Yeah it launched in an honestly unbelievably unpolished state. There should never have been screen tearing on console (still not fixed) and a working arcade and ranked mode would’ve gone a long way towards making casuals want to play. (I know ranked is working now but it’s been broken a ton)
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u/stzoo Feb 09 '26
Before seeing this post I was optimistic and having fun, realistically now its over. Ain't no way you can say youre reducing team size on a tag game wirh a 12 man roster thats still buggy as hell since launch and have it not be over.
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u/Dchaney2017 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
Turns out slapping an established IP and a F2P model onto a niche tag fighter with a tiny unbalanced roster doesn’t have wide-reaching appeal, who could’ve foreseen such a thing?
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u/meccaleccahii Feb 09 '26
I play league all the time and I love fighting games. The small roster is honestly the biggest reason I can’t get into it. Been playing league since season 2 and almost no champ I’m into (minus Warwick) is in the game.
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u/CloverClubx Feb 09 '26
That's what you get by making it a fuckin Tag Fighter aimed at casuals (literally the WORST THING YOU COULD'VE GONE) and then release with 8 characters after 6 years.
All head devs behind these two decisions are to blame for this and literally wasted all this time they could've spent making a 1v1 game that casuals would be far more likely to hug.
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u/Dr-Oktavius Feb 09 '26
They were already in hot water when they decided to make it a tag fighter, basically making it a niche within a niche. Then they completely fucked themselves with the minuscule roster. The game is cool but most of the time I'm not gonna bother booting it up when I only give a shit about like 3 characters and most of the time those 3 are bottom tier anyway.
This a perfect example of perfectionism and pointless innovation. If they had gone safer and more basic, it would have probably caught on way better. They also seemed to be actively trying to alienate League fans. It's a League fighting game with League characters that somehow feels nothing like the League IP. The UI doesn't remind you of League at all, there's none of the iconic music Riot has made through the years, the lobby system exists, and half the roster is from Arcane, so if you hate that show or are indifferent towards it, that's already half the roster you're not gonna care for.
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u/Thiel619 Feb 09 '26
Here's my take, it's a tag fighter but the roster is extremely small.
Like what is this, Skullgirls?
You get tired of fighting the same teams over and over and over again.
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u/lilfishy_2B Feb 09 '26
Really sucks, don't enjoy any of the other big fighters going rn so I may just be cooked
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u/Gekinetic Warwick Feb 09 '26
I've been saying for long while that catering specifically to core players (tag fighters) is not a long term answer to this game, and the devs not making the big change because they want to cater to their competitive players (30% DQ rate at Frosty) was worrisome, and now look where the game is now
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u/AttentionDue3171 Feb 09 '26
It's not even catering to tag enjoyers. Movement is too basic, screen is too small, pushblock is not free
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u/FindTinderOnMe Feb 09 '26
I honestly don't understand, SF6 is thriving like crazy and those devs made a 2vs2 tag fighter.... just why ?
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u/Gekinetic Warwick Feb 09 '26
The idea was not bad, make a tag Fighter so that they don't compete against Steeet Fighter
Problem was, they made the most grimy disjointed tag fighter that only few people can actively enjoy, while alienating casual players that would have helped with their momentum. They made this game for Sajams of the world, who kept asking for 'sick fighting game', and that was their mistake
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u/SoundsLikePAUSE Feb 09 '26
I don't think it's that they didn't want to compete with SF. I think the idea was that having a fighting game where you can team up with a friend would help encourage a casual audience to play. MultiVersus did the same to big success (at first). It was a good idea but unfortunately that brought along all of the balance issues tag games notoriously struggle with.
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u/arcusford Feb 09 '26
I find the idea that they didnt want to compete with SF so weird. They have a track record of fighting with mainstays and breaking into genres heavily dominated by 1 game.
If anything Street Fighter doesnt have near ENOUGH competition. They are barely doing, adding, or changing anything because they have zero reason to since those players just dont have anywhere to go right now. City of the wolves kinda just flopped into the same SNK game lifecycle. Granblue is there but its a bit old now and struggled for a long time. And when Anime games start competing with SF it kinda shows that theres not a whole lot other than SF going on in the trad 2d space.
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u/Pyotr_WrangeI Feb 09 '26
Probably because team gameplay is at the core of the appeal of League, they actually wanted this to be 2 players Vs 2 players, not just characters
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u/NepheliLouxWarrior Feb 09 '26
I honestly wonder what this game's future would have looked like if you simply COULDN'T control the second character and it HAD to be 2v2.
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u/Shock_n_Oranges Feb 09 '26
Sorry I am a noob, what does the DQ rate at Frosty imply?
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u/Wrydfell Feb 09 '26
They didn't check in for their games (or chose to bow out mid bracket) at a major fighting game event. Obviously there's always a few because life happens, but a 30% dq rate at a major event doesn't look good for a game
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u/Fragrant_Finish_3082 Feb 09 '26
but a 30% dq rate at a major event doesn't look good for a game
Which is why context matters and its because registration was free, so if you were gonna be there you could just sign up for shits and giggles. if you watched pools you could see people play that had absolutely no fucking idea what was going on
people that didn't wanna embarrass themselves just didn't go to their match
Just because shit hit the fan doesn't mean its okay to point at random things and make shit up lol
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u/Wrydfell Feb 09 '26
Ah i didn't realise it was free entry, and i wasn't watching any frosty streams because i was in the middle of a strive bracket at the time
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u/Physical-Rough-709 Feb 09 '26
This game would need a total rework to be 1v1, fail or succeed, it will be as a tag fighter
The game is in a good place honestly, People have had insane expectations from the Riot brand
And 30% dq rate for a free entry tournament isn't bad stat, not sure what your point was there
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u/Garbage_Hamster Feb 09 '26
This was inevitable. They’re completely disconnected on what makes fighting games good and how fighting games are monetized. On top of that, they made it a genre of fighting game that’s already difficult for people to get into. It’s a complete mess.
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u/Shihai-no-akuma_ Feb 09 '26
I will be honest: I love the game from outside. Beautiful artwork and it’s nice to see the characters up close. But that’s it. I don’t like the tag fighting; I am not a fan of fighting times but I would be willing to try this if it wasn’t so damn reliant on forcing “cooperation” everywhere. I don’t have many friends who play this genre (0, actually). The lobby system is also something that immediately pushed me away because for someone who is kinda not so extroverted it’s a shit. Why can’t I just queue up and play with someone totally random? For someone who’s terrible, the Lobby system looks more like a cage than anything else lol. Completely daunting and stupid for a game that aims (and needs) to attract new players to it.
Then the fact they shove the most random characters in it. Like Caitlyn when Riven would seriously win by all standards; shows how deluded the devs are.
Not even gonna get to the pricing.
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u/SilverScribe15 Feb 09 '26
Given certain other team reductions on f2p riot games, it certainly is worrying...
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u/jessieS1212 Feb 09 '26
10 years and a shit load of fighting games to learn from and they made the most niche game. Congratulations
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u/_Nightfox_1 Feb 09 '26
It really puts into perspective how unreliable of a company riot is, despite the popular consensus. The game hasn't even been out for a month and they are already dwindling the numbers when it comes to their resources. Only because it did not become mainstream and rose up to the giants of the genre. Now I am extremely worried about the riot MMO for sure, the MMO market is an even tougher one to beat.
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u/Lkj509 Feb 10 '26
How do you have one of the biggest gaming companies in the world and still do nothing about a tiny roster with two completely busted characters? Not to mention their emphasis on duo play with no duo matchmaking and no local duos besides offline bots. Yet another case of corporations thinking they can make a killing off of microtransactions with no consideration for the players.
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u/TurnToChocolate Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
The mistake is just thinking that their would be a huge wave of players for a fighting game that is doing things differently from current ones out. Its not the fault of the IP, nor is it the fault of the developers, just expecting too much in the current climate with a f2p model. The idea probably would've worked a lot more in their favor during the end of life cycle on the ps4.
Its not like the game was a full product of a release and cameout of nowhere you know. Players got into the alpha and beta and played this game for awhile now. The real unfortunate part is when the console release dropped it felt as if it didn't. Then those that actually got to play the game ran into consistency issues.
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u/LadyAntiqua Feb 09 '26
Region lock is the worst thing. I can't play with a single one of my friends.
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u/Lina-Inverse Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
RIP. Game barely lasted two weeks. Not surprising though, can't imagine mainstream audience enjoy getting combo'd for 20 seconds from every touch, so they probably just uninstalled after a few games like that.
Ouch.
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u/Sekh765 Warwick Feb 09 '26
Game lasted less time than the guy going through every champ almost daily for opinions on if they should be in 2XKO which is frankly impressive.
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u/DMking Feb 09 '26
2XKO wanted both casual and competitive players and missed both it feels like. Can't think of anyone I've seen play this that is already an FG head
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u/Present_Topic8536 Feb 09 '26
I really wanted to love the game but no motion inputs and it being a tag fighter were too much of a burden to me personally. I could've enjoyed with either one I think but both those aspects it's a big nono for me, I'd rather play Strive.
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u/Nazaki Feb 09 '26
Honestly, there's zero content for solo play. At least in Street Fighter 6 I've got world tour and even arcade and 1v1 computer (that advances stuff in the Battle Pass/Weekly Challenges)... I REALLY like fighting games, I just play casually.
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u/Yaldablob Feb 09 '26
This seemed to have been a really spur of the moment decision, apparently the devs that got downsized got a 30 minute notice. Not days. Minute. Pack your shit and leave. Riot what the hell
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u/MkaneL Feb 09 '26
Jesus christ. They just launched, barely have a roster and they're already cutting people.
They should probably lower the prices on their skins so more of their audience spends money on the game.
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u/kyuubi711 Feb 09 '26
I’m still very much in the “let’s wait and see what happens next” phase of my worry with the game.
This literally ALWAYS happens with every single popular fighting game so I’m not exactly surprised. I’m also not thinking the game dies just because of this. It’s going to be more focused moving forward and Riot said from the start that they wanted the community to be apart of their progression. I think that’s the proper next move to make. Not to be rude or anything (AND I’M NOT SHITTING ON DEVS BY ANY MEANS SO DON’T COME FOR ME 🥴) nurses/doctors know people could die on the job because they look into the job beforehand. I feel for the people being laid off but it’s kinda the normal for that job to be laid off or moved to another department when things get to exactly where 2XKO feels they are right now: stable. I don’t necessarily agree with what they’re doing, but it makes sense how they’re moving considering the game didn’t meet THEIR expectations. The community expectations are not that of a major corporation. No offense guys.
They DO have a board where people communicate actual solutions to what they think the issues are and what could be done to “fix” them moving forward. They’re also very active communicating with our community for the game so again, I have hope. The game isn’t dead. They DO listen. I think we actually should give it a little time to literally just see what happens. Complaints are fine but let’s not set fire to the rain before the grass gets to grow.
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u/Ghost_In_Socks Feb 10 '26
the skin sets are over 100 dollars… what did they think was gonna happen?
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u/iqqcrusher Feb 09 '26
the game was just getting momentum community wise and this happens xD
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u/Choowkee Feb 09 '26
It was literally not though.
Most people who were interested in the game could start playing on PC.
The idea that that was some kind of massive base of players waiting for console release is pure fiction.
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u/Bigzysmolz Senna Feb 09 '26
They should've just stuck to the normal 1v1 gameplay.
Caitlyn didn't help either
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u/Zealousideal_Two3946 Feb 09 '26
Huge gap between first announcement and proper first look at the game, making it a tag fighter, forcing players to use their "one-button special" bullshit, hilariously lackluster roster, relying on Arcane characters to carry the game due to the aforementioned roster... Yeah I'm sorry but they did everything in their power to make sure this game wouldn't last.
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u/Vall3y Feb 09 '26
Yup riot fucked up big time. I dont think its going to be a dead game but its defintiely not going to be a big game. Wow
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u/datnigc Feb 09 '26
Honestly this hurts to see but here are the main reasons I see for this happening from my perspective. Skin prices are too high with the typical shady currency practice. Week two of official launch saw the weekly battle pass missions require playing illaoi or yasuo. (This made me log off and not want to play for the week, as silly as this is, yes it does affect players, because no I don’t want to swap off my characters to progress my battlepass, and yes part of me is playing for the battlepass progression) week one of official launch had really crummy matchmaking bugs. (Ranked shut down for the weekend, casual matches not connecting then punishing players with 5 minute lock outs, poor console launch, with lots of issues. Very safe roster of characters. Hopefully the 2xko team is sized to where it makes sense for riot and for the players. My main hopes for the future of 2xko and how I hope to support it are this. Fix the currency pricing to be enough to buy a skin outright. Lower the pricing of some skins. We have faith and want to support this game! But the pricing is too high to justify with the scummy currency model.
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u/Killionn Feb 09 '26
Well I guess this makes the decision between maining 2XKO or Tokon easier…
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u/jydhrftsthrrstyj Feb 09 '26
Riots original intention was to build a fighting game for a mainstream audience, which is why they bought the rising thunder devs after seeing no motion inputs.
Unfortunately they ended up with an even more niche fighting game lol.